Forget About Ballots

Now We Use Wallets

October 22, 1999|By DENIS HORGAN; Courant Columnist

Vote. That is the usual message of the season: Get out there and vote like crazy. Vote with both hands. Voting is what makes the world go 'round. It's the cornerstone of democracy. The message is sung on every street corner.

Maybe that needs to be updated.

Don't vote.

Give.

Who voted Dan Quayle out of the water? You? Me? Your Uncle Charlie?

Who voted Elizabeth Dole out of the picture? Was she vanquished because her political views proved unsuccessful with the voters? Was it that she was a woman that turned away the voters? Did she get shunned at the ballot box because of her record, her philosophy, her capabilities? Is that why she and Lamar Alexander and the former vice president and others simply didn't get enough votes?

Of course not.

Nobody voted against them.

Not in the traditional way.

They're gone because someone else got more money, before their positions were even fairly judged by the trifling voters who barely stand for anything in the brave new world of politic$.

In fact, you can truly wonder why they waste so much of our time on primaries and the general balloting.

What they ought to do is simply have a money-counting a year in advance: Whoever has the most dough wins. Skip the voters entirely. Clearly, having sacks of money is more important than mere votes. That is where we are headed.

Gov. George W. Bush has gallons of money and, at this point, it would be hard to find a bridge game's quartet of people who could tell you what he stands for besides a few vagaries and bumper- sticker slogans. But, because he has the money, he is declared the victor-in- advance. Not wrongly, probably, but sadly.

Sadly because his unprecedented vanquishing of the GOP field so far is not at all tied to his positions but on his money. It is no longer a matter of ideas but a matter of cash. It is a climate in which the prospects of worthy-but-poor Jesus of Nazareth or the Siddhartha Gautama Buddha or Mahatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr. would be discounted, lost in the shuffle of all- important cash.

Except for a trumped-up ``straw poll'' in Iowa, where the ``voters'' had to pay to do so, no one has registered a single actual vote for any of the candidates -- the actual Iowa caucus being three months away, the flinty New Hampshire primary still almost a third-of-a-year away. But the candidates fall like autumn leaves.

Because of money.

Big money.

Not because their ideas are stupid or brilliant. Or their records meaningless or solid gold. Or their credibility low or sky- high. They lose because someone else has vacuumed up all the money and is declared the victor-presumptive.

Because George W. Bush has a Texas- size bankroll, everyone else is bankrupted -- although the suitability of anyone's ideas has not been judged by the voters over whom the successful ``candidate'' will preside. The field is skinnied up by the money people.

They get to vote. Instead of a ballot, their self-interested vote is registered in greenbacks. Lots of them. They provide the wedge that dislodges someone you might happen to think worthy of a vote -- or not, it doesn't make any difference. The field is whittled away before you and I get any chance to make our opinions known. You and I have no say at all, unless we can pony up the tens of millions of dollars required to keep someone in the race.

I don't know if Elizabeth Dole was a serious candidate worthy of wide support. I don't know whether Quayle or Alexander had produced a creditable program worthy of broad national support. We will never know, because they lacked the money against Goliath Bush. Anybody who thinks this is a good way to do the governing business must be rich himself -- or on the pad.

Meantime, Republicans in the Senate once again destroyed bipartisan and watered-down efforts to bring the most tepid reforms to a process where financial might makes right, where the sandbag is filled with thousand-dollar bills.

Often there is a ``people's side'' and a ``politicians' side'' to an issue. On this one the distinction is crystal clear.